


my dear you remix // the hereafter

by sleepverses



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:26:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepverses/pseuds/sleepverses
Summary: madara wrestles with life after death.-Madara wakes in the hereafter.There is no judgement. There is no weighing of scales.“I killed a lot of people, though,” he says.
Relationships: Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	my dear you remix // the hereafter

**Author's Note:**

> i recently read Rachel Khong's short story my dear you, and i thought about love in all its forms, and what it must look like after we die. do we recognize the people we loved, even in death?

Madara wakes in the hereafter. 

There is no judgement. There is no weighing of scales. 

“I killed a lot of people, though,” he says.

The woman behind the desk, Azra, (according to a shimmering name plate balanced haphazardly on a tall pile of books) nods thoughtfully. Her face is oval shaped and ageless. 

“You did,” she says, perusing a long scroll. 

“Like. A lot.”

“Do you think we didn’t notice?” Azra asks, half amused. 

Madara scoffs. “Look, lady, I don’t know how you run this place. And how come I don’t remember all this the first time I died?” 

Azra smiles pleasantly. “Time works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it?” 

Madara groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. He has spent two years and three seasons sitting with Azra and arguing his fate. There is a permanent indentation of his ass on the down stuffed armchair. 

Azra snaps a finger, and the scroll vanishes. “Madara,” she says. “If that is all.” 

He crosses his arms. “It’s not. I am not meant to be here.” 

The hereafter, heaven, the afterlife, whatever this place was -- was meant for people like Hashirama. People who saw goodness and sought goodness. But instead, Madara was here, and if there was no justice in the previous life, for God’s sake, there had to be justice in the next. 

Azra sighs. “Let’s compromise. We’ll revisit this issue in one hundred years. Alright? Ten decades. See what you think.” 

Before he can answer, she disappears. Madara blinks, and he is no longer in her office; instead, he stands in the midst of a grassy plain, and hears the ocean crashes against the shore. 

“Fuck,” he mumbles, and heads to the sound of water. 

For ten years, Madara sits by the sea. There is no real rhyme or reason to it. It was a rare occasion when he saw an ocean in the last life, so he takes in his fill in this one. Halfway through the eleventh year, Madara decides to do something different and heads down to the house waiting for him on the other side of the shore. 

In the hereafter, he discovers, he is eternally thirty three. A good age, he thinks, naked after a bath, examining himself in an extravagant mirror. Madara flexes and smiles to himself, wondering idly the last time he felt so alive. Well, there was that time he had orchestrated a plot to be risen from the dead and reanimated. But even then, his joints were slightly wooden from all the ash. 

His body is pure as a spring day, no scars in sight. He discovers he can change his hair length, and eye colour with only a thought, but decides against it. If Madara does make his eyes slightly less puffy, well. That’s between him and whoever the fuck runs this joint. 

That night, Madara dreams of a wood based kekkai genkai, muscled shoulders, a boisterous laugh, and strong hands with scarred knuckles. When they touch him, slowly, and tenderly, he wakes flushed and hard. 

One day, in the midst of his twenty-sixth year, Madara runs into a man with flowing black hair, and the same elegant nose as his father. When Izuna wraps him in a tender embrace, the memories flood all the way back, and Madara weeps and weeps. 

Izuna’s laugh is delighted. “I was wondering when I would see you again. You don’t know how long I’ve waited!”

Madara pulls him in by the scruff of his neck, pressing their foreheads together. Izuna is taller, broader. His baby brother is older in this life than he ever was in the last. Madara tries to stop the tears, but there’s something wrong with him; he can’t stop crying. 

Izuna hushes him, rubs soothing circles into his heaving back. “It’s okay, nii-san. Souls that have a bond in one life will always recognize each other in another,” he whispers. “I knew it was only a matter of time.”

They spend two years at a bustling ramen hub, just catching up. Izuna is less than impressed with Madara’s antics. 

“So I met someone,” Izuna says softly, stirring his six hundred forty seventh bowl of ramen. 

Madara raises his eyebrows. “You can do that here?”

Izuna smiles. “You can do whatever you want, nii-san. Have you not noticed how attractive everyone is?”

Madara shrugs. “Tell me about them,” he says instead. 

“She’s everything,” Izuna replies. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and smiles. “I dreamt about her the night before I met her. That was, God, that was decades ago. We have a whole routine. I think it’s affecting our reality. Every Sunday, our neighbour asks for a cup of sugar like clockwork. ” 

Izuna laughs, shaking his head, and Madara watches fondly as he sips his broth. 

Memory is cruel, and Madara wracks his brain for years to knock loose the name of the man with the kekkai genkai. The battle is fruitless, and he remains a frequent visitor in Madara’s dreams. 

Twenty years pass like falling asleep. 

Izuna is a blessing Madara knows he does not deserve, not in the previous life, and not in this one. With a raspy laugh like twinkling bells, Izuna is divinity in the echo of a human being, and Madara accepts the gift of his existence in the hereafter. It is supremely selfish, he thinks, to be granted even the simplest fortune of watching his younger brother dip his toes in the sea. After all the destruction he has wrought, there is perhaps no person less deserving than Madara in the hereafter. He does not deserve to be happy, he thinks. But Izuna is so joyful, so beautiful, it is impossible to not feel desperately alive in his presence. 

Izuna disagrees. There is only one solution, he tells Madara; to cultivate life. And so Izuna teaches Madara to garden. Madara, he quickly learns, does not have a green thumb, much less a green cell in his entire being. But there is a sad light that softens Madara’s features as they watch vermillion shoots sprout from the virile dirt, a nostalgia, Izuna thinks, born from the otherside. 

On a Sunday morning, after Madara has slept over at Izuna’s, the elusive neighbour knocks on the door. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Madara pulls open the heavy oak and gold leaf door, and for a minute, suspects he is still dreaming. The man is olive skinned and beautiful, plump lipped and dark hair pulled into a low bun at the base of his neck. He looks just like he does in Madara’s dreams. 

“Your eyes look different,” Hashirama says, and sticks out a cup with a knuckle scarred hand.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading. wrote this in a frenzy last night and it's very unpolished, but that's life for you.


End file.
